By Jove, the natives are restless tonight.

The Avengers

4.17: Small Game for Big Hunters

I wonder if Death at Bargain Prices’ camping scene, suggestive of an exotic clime but based in a department store, was an inspiration for Small Game For Big Hunters’ more protracted excursion to the African country of Kalaya… in Hertfordshire. Gerry O’Hara, in his second of two episodes for the show again delivers on the atmosphere, making the most of Philip Levene’s teleplay.

Steed: Had a spot of bother with the natives. A full-blown savage, with a very unfriendly disposition.

Mrs Peel: Oh, come now, Steed.

It’s also an episode big on the colonial critique, not to mention innocently dipping into the conspiratorial waters of spreading diseases (and testing vaccines) in third world countries. The teaser is a particular good one, as a man (Peter Thomas), pursued through thick jungle, ends up with an arrow in his back, collapsing near a sign that reads “London 23 Miles”.

Mrs Peel investigates signs of a Kalayan tribal influence (the Shirenzai symbol, “a more dread form of voodoo”) while Steed gets personal, calling on Colonel Rawlings (Bill Fraser, General Grugger in Meglos), who lives inside a biodome-equivalent jungle.

Promoting suggestions of the supernatural is Professor Swain (Liam Redmond), whose misdirections (“He sleeps the sleep of the living dead. There’s no awakening him. Not by any means I have at my command”) mask his own dastardly doings, since he’s the ringleader of a plot to take back control of Kalaya by introducing tse tse flies carrying a strain of sleeping sickness that will render the whole country paralysed within a week.

Steed: He’s got a nice line in au pairs.

Trent: He’s got a whole tribe of them out there.

Swain’s supported by game hunter Simon Trent (James Villiers), given to making threatening allusions (“This time of day, if I see something moving, it’s all I can do to stop myself from shooting it”) and detaining Steed at the residence on account of the hazardous rivers during monsoon season.

Indulging the delusions of an eccentric becomes an increasingly common trope of the series, one we previously saw with Sir Horace Winslip in The Gravediggers. Colonel Rawlings is a Blimpish type withdrawn into his own oblivious world (“He couldn’t survive the winds of change, softened his brain. He still thinks he’s there”) while his assistants get up to no good under his nose.

Trent: Tomorrow we fly back to Kalaya, Steed. We’re going back. Back. And we’re taking this with us. Thousands of the little beasties, that’s all we need. And once they’re release in a climate like that…

Steed: They breed like flies?

Trent: Yes, like flies. They breed like flies.

Swain: The whole country will be paralysed in a week, and then we take over. A pretty plan, don’t you think?

Indeed, during the finale, while an alluring Emma arrives impersonating Lala (Esther Anderson) with a flower in her hair, the Colonel wanders around making irrelevant comments about a notional uprising (“Take them some coloured beads. Always seems to help”; “By Jove, the natives are restless tonight, A firm hand, that’s what’s needed. A firm hand”).

Not that the rest of it is exactly played straight, with Steed swinging in on a vine to Emma’s rescue (“Me Steed”; “Me Emma”) and putting paid to Trent after confidently telling him, in 007 fashion, “Mauser, single barrel. You’ve had your five”. Subsequently grappling with him, a further shot goes off (“My arithmetic is shocking!”) Villiers makes for a low key but effective villain, Redmond less so, meaning that some of his nefarious lines fall a bit flat (“All that work almost spoiled because of you. That arouses me to violence”).

Notable in the episode are two persons of colour, the aforementioned Anderson and Paul Danquah as Razafi, Kalayan Secret Service. The former has little in the way of dialogue, but the latter makes a strong impression when he reveals his undercover status to Steed. I hadn’t realised the series’ predominant absence of ethnic actors was intentional (“Clemens explains that the success of ‘THE AVENGERS’ is due to its element of fantasy. And all the taboos come under the heading of social realities…”) It’s a thin argument, particularly since it is broken on several occasions (more recently, Brian True-May tried out a similar line with Midsommer Murders).

Steed: I once shot a bull elephant myself.

Outfitter: Really? What did you use?

Steed: F8 at 500ths of a second, and a small roll of film.

Amusing interludes include Steed calling on Tropic Outfitters early on, precise in their knowledge (“My goodness, sir. This is a relic. One of our old mid-tropical five-button broad weaves”) and up with the sales patter (“No matter where you are, steaming jungle, burning bush or arid desert, we always get your order through”).

Mrs Peel: What’s missing?

Steed: Colonel Rawling’s file. Fortunately, he overlooked my cucumber sandwiches.

Mrs Peel: Oh, very good.

So too, after his altercation with a Kalayan native, Steed is sanguine about the damage done (above). There are some nice edits, notably Emma awaking from leafing through a book on tribal rituals and seeing a “real” tribesman. Steed plays what looks like an intense game of cards with the Colonel, only for it to be revealed as Snap! The laugh-off is merely so-so, however (Steed and Emma in a rowing boat, she telling him to start the other engine, he beginning to paddle in response).

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Abandon selective targeting. Shoot everything.

28 Weeks Later (2007) (SPOILERS) The first five minutes of 28 Weeks Later are far and away the best part of this sequel, offering in quick succession a devastating moral quandary and a waking nightmare, immortalised on the screen. After that, while significantly more polished, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo reveals his concept to be altogether inferior to Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s, falling back on the crutches of gore, nihilism, and disengaging and limiting shifts of focus between characters in whom one has little investment in the first place.

The Bible never said anything about amphetamines.

The Color of Money (1986) (SPOILERS) I tend to think it’s evident when Scorsese isn’t truly exercised by material. He can still invest every ounce of the technical acumen at his fingertips, and the results can dazzle on that level, but you don’t really feel the filmmaker in the film. Which, for one of his pictures to truly carry a wallop, you need to do. We’ve seen quite a few in such deficit in recent years, most often teaming with Leo. The Color of Money , however, is the first where it was out-and-out evident the subject matter wasn’t Marty’s bag. He needed it, desperately, to come off, but in the manner a tradesman who wants to keep getting jobs. This sequel to The Hustler doesn’t linger in the mind, however good it may be, moment by moment.

Captain, he who walks in fire will burn his feet.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) (SPOILERS) Ray Harryhausen returns to the kind of unadulterated fantasy material that made Jason and the Argonauts such a success – swords & stop motion, if you like. In between, there were a couple of less successful efforts, HG Wells adaptation First Men in the Moon and The Valley of the Gwangi (which I considered the best thing ever as a kid: dinosaur walks into a cowboy movie). Harryhausen’s special-effects supremacy – in a for-hire capacity – had also been consummately eclipsed by Raquel Welch’s fur bikini in One Million Years B.C . The Golden Voyage of Sinbad follows the expected Dynamation template – blank-slate hero, memorable creatures, McGuffin quest – but in its considerable favour, it also boasts a villainous performance by nobody-at-the-time, on-the-cusp-of-greatness Tom Baker.

If this were a hoax, would we have six dead men up on that mountain?

The X-Files 4.24: Gethsemane Season Four is undoubtedly the point at which the duff arc episodes begin to amass, encroaching upon the decent ones for dominance. Fortunately, however, the season finale is a considerable improvement’s on Three’s, even if it’s a long way from the cliffhanger high of 2.25: Anasazi .

My hands hurt from galloping.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) (SPOILERS) Say what you like about the 2016 reboot, at least it wasn’t labouring under the illusion it was an Amblin movie. Ghostbusters 3.5 features the odd laugh, but it isn’t funny, and it most definitely isn’t scary. It is, however, shamelessly nostalgic for, and reverential towards, the original(s), which appears to have granted it a free pass in fan circles. It didn’t deserve one.

Your desecration of reality will not go unpunished.

2021-22 Best-of, Worst-of and Everything Else Besides The movies might be the most visible example of attempts to cling onto cultural remnants as the previous societal template clatters down the drain. It takes something people really want – unlike a Bond movie where he kicks the can – to suggest the model of yesteryear, one where a billion-dollar grosser was like sneezing. You can argue Spider-Man: No Way Home is replete with agendas of one sort or another, and that’s undoubtedly the case (that’s Hollywood), but crowding out any such extraneous elements (and they often are) is simply a consummate crowd-pleaser that taps into tangible nostalgia through its multiverse take. Of course, nostalgia for a mere seven years ago, for something you didn’t like anyway, is a symptom of how fraught these times have become.

Out of my way, you lubberly oaf, or I’ll slit your gullet and shove it down your gizzard!

The Princess and the Pirate (1944) (SPOILERS) As I suggested when revisiting The Lemon Drop Kid , you’re unlikely to find many confessing to liking Bob Hope movies these days. Even Chevy Chase gets higher approval ratings. If asked to attest to the excruciating stand-up comedy Hope, the presenter and host, I doubt even diehards would proffer an endorsement. Probably even fewer would admit to having a hankering for Hope, were they aware of, or further still gave credence to, alleged MKUltra activities. But the movie comedy Hope, the fourth-wall breaking, Road -travelling quipster-coward of (loosely) 1939-1952? That Hope’s a funny guy, mostly, and many of his movies during that period are hugely inventive, creative comedies that are too easily dismissed under the “Bob Hope sucks” banner. The Princess and the Pirate is one of them.

I’ve heard the dancing’s amazing, but the music sucks.

Tick, Tick… Boom! (2021) (SPOILERS) At one point in Tick, Tick… Boom! – which really ought to have been the title of an early ’90s Steven Seagal vehicle – Andrew Garfield’s Jonathan Larson is given some sage advice on how to find success in his chosen field: “ On the next, maybe try writing about what you know ”. Unfortunately, the very autobiographical, very-meta result – I’m only surprised the musical doesn’t end with Larson finishing writing this musical, in which he is finishing writing his musical, in which he is finishing writing his musical… – takes that acutely literally.

Who gave you the crusade franchise? Tell me that.

The Star Chamber (1983) (SPOILERS) Peter Hyams’ conspiracy thriller might simply have offered sauce too weak to satisfy, reining in the vast machinations of an all-powerful hidden government found commonly during ’70s fare and substituting it with a more ’80s brand that failed to include that decade’s requisite facile resolution. There’s a good enough idea here – instead of Charles Bronson, it’s the upper echelons of the legal system resorting to vigilante justice – but The Star Chamber suffers from a failure of nerve, repenting its premise just as it’s about to dig into the ramifications.

You’re going to make me drop a donkey.

Encanto (2021) (SPOILERS) By my estimation, Disney brand pictures are currently edging ahead of the Pixars. Not that there’s a whole lot in it, since neither have been at full wattage for a few years now. Raya and the Last Dragon and now Encanto are collectively just about superior to Soul and Luca . Generally, the animation arm’s attempts to take in as much cultural representation as they possibly can, to make up for their historic lack of woke quotas, has – ironically – had the effect of homogenising the product to whole new levels. So here we have Colombia, renowned the world over for the US’s benign intervention in their region, not to mention providing the CIA with subsistence income, beneficently showered with gifts from the US’s greatest artistic benefactor.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog